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Monday, 21 November 2011

Internet Open sourcing the news

Open sourcing the news

The development of the personal computer may have empoweredthe individual, but there were distinct limits. One was softwarecode itself. Proprietary programs were like black boxes.We could see what they did, but not how they worked.This situation struck Richard Stallman, among others, aswrong.

In ,January 1984, Stallman quit his post at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. Heformally launched a project to create a free operating systemand desktop software based on the Unix operating system thatran on many university computers. Stallman’s ideas ultimatelybecame the foundation for Linux, the open source operatingsystem that brought fame to Linus Torvalds. The goal of Stallman’s work, then and now, was to ensurethat users of computers always had free software programs forthe most basic and important tasks. Free, in this case, was moreabout freedom than about cost. Stallman and others in thismovement thought that the programming instructions—thesource code—of free software had to be open for inspection andmodification by anyone. In the late 1990s, as Linux was gainingtraction in the marketplace, and as many free software applicationsand operating systems were available, the movement gotanother name: open source,Open source software projects are a digital version of asmall-town tradition: the barn raising. But open source projectscan involve people from around the world. Most will never meetexcept online. Guided by project leaders—Torvalds in the caseof Linux—they contribute bits and pieces of what becomes awhole package. Open source software, in many cases, is as goodas or better than the commercial variety. And these programsare at the heart of the Internet’s most basic functions: opensource software powers most of the web server computers thatdish out information to browsers.from tom paine to blogs and beyondWhen the code is open for inspection, it’s safer to usebecause people can find and fill the security holes. Bugs, theannoying flaws that cause program crashes and other unexpectedbehavior, can be found and fixed more easily, too.What does this have to do with tomorrow’s journalism?Plenty.Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor who haswritten extensively on the open source phenomenon, has made astrong case that this emergent style of organization applies muchmore widely than software. In a 2002 essay, “Coase’s Penguin,”he said the free software style could work better thanthe traditional capitalist structure of firms and markets in somecircumstances. In particular, he said that it “has systematicadvantages over markets and managerial hierarchies when theobject of production is information or culture, and where thephysical capital necessary for that production—computers andcommunications capabilities—is widely distributed instead ofconcentrated.”He could have been describing journalism. In his essay, andin the course of several long conversations we’ve had in the pastseveral years, Benkler has made the case that several of thebuilding blocks are already in place to augment Big Media, ifnot substitute it outright, with open source techniques.He told me that bloggers and operators of independentnews sites already do a respectable job of scanning for andsorting news for people who want it. The editorial function hasbeen adopted not just by bloggers, but by a host of new kinds ofonline news operations. Some peer-reviewed news sites, such asthe collaborative Kuro5hin, which describes itself as “technologyand culture, from the trenches,” are doing interestingjournalism by any standard, with readers contributing the essaysand deciding which stories make it to the top of the page.According to Benkler, only in the area of investigative journalismdoes Big Media retain an advantage over open sourcejournalism. This is due to the resources Big Media can throw atan investigation.we the mediaIn my own small sphere, I’m convinced that this alreadyapplies. If my readers know more than I do (which I know theydo), I can include them in the process of making my journalismbetter. While there are elements of open source here, I’m notdescribing an entirely transparent process. But new forms ofjournalistic tools, such as the Wiki (which I’ll discuss in the nextchapter), are entirely transparent from the outset. More arecoming.An open source philosophy may produce better journalismat the outset, but that’s just the start of a wider phenomenon. Inthe conversational mode of journalism I suggested in the Introduction,the first article may be only the beginning of the conversationin which we all enlighten each other. We can correctour mistakes. We can add new facts and context. If we can raise a barn together, we can do journalismtogether.